Partnering with the Bishops

Church Planting

In Greater New Haven, Connecticut

Gospel-centered church attendance in New England is among the lowest in the country.

1.9

Gospel-centered church attendance in New Haven County

25

Gospel-Centered church attendance across the nation

Abby describes Curran as a “New Englander at heart.”

Curran was raised in the Deep South by native New Englanders, Abby was raised in Portugal by native Floridians. God has called us and our four children (Ellie, 10; Hudson, 8; twins Jack and Pete, 6) to Connecticut to plant a church!

We are graduates of Covenant College where we met; Curran served as a youth minister in North Carolina while Abby completed an MA in education, then Curran attended Covenant Theological Seminary (MDiv) and Concordia Seminary in St. Louis where he is a PhD candidate in historical theology. He served as an elder before becoming a solo pastor of a PCA church in Carbondale, IL. Abby taught Special Ed in public schools for five years and in a Charlotte Mason school for two years. Since becoming a full-time mom she has used her education background to connect with parents and children throughout the community. We were approved by the Mission to North America Church Planter Assessment Center and have been living in Milford since 2018, gathering a core group and starting the church plant.

Consistently ranked as the most secular, post-Christian region of the country, New England has a troubled religious history.

The Unitarian-Congregationalist debates in the early 1800s led the great-great-great-great-grandparents of many New Englanders today to walk away from the Church because they perceived it had nothing meaningful to say.

Our parent church–Christ Presbyterian Church of New Haven, second picture above–was the first new church construction in the city of New Haven in a century!

Milford

Midway between Connecticut’s two largest population centers (Bridgeport and New Haven)

Approximately 52,000 people

Only 5 gospel-centered churches

No Reformed evangelical presence

A recent Barna study ranked the Hartford-New Haven area as the 7th most post-Christian region in the country

Only 1 gospel-centered church for every 8,000 people in New Haven County

Our Vision: A “Total Christ” Church

The 5th-century church father Augustine articulated a vision of Jesus’ Church that we want to emulate:

A church that understands the centrality of the gospel to all of life. As Tim Keller has written, the gospel is “not just the A-B-C’s but the A to Z of Christianity!” We live before God and each other on the basis of Christ’s work for us, not our own abilities, past, character or accomplishments.

A church that lives out the reality that Christ’s presence in heaven is distinct, but never separate, from Christ’s local presence on earth, mediated by the Holy Spirit and fleshed out in the body of His Church. The Church does the gospel in the midst of the world as Christ’s presence in the world.

$578,600

Total Goal

$416,407

Amount Provided

Mission Anabaino

is a church planting movement dedicated to planting local churches committed to the “Total Christ” vision outlined above.

Our church will be the sixth local plant; 10 global plants are already in progress! Anabaino is Greek for “I ascend”: we take our name from it because as Christ is now ascended in heaven, we the Church are his hands and feet in the world!

Mission to North America

Presbyterian Church in America

We are an approved affiliate of the PCA’s MNA Church Planting division